Brand evolution and website.

The Art with Heart logo is a powerful and recognisable mark throughout Manchester’s artistic community, but as the organisation evolved, it was clear that a new visual language and brand positioning was needed to effectively communicate the organisation’s offering. Alongside this, a new website was on the cards - one that could take the new brand language and showcase it to audiences, communicate the breadth of work that the organisation offers - and showcase their standard of care for audiences, artists and collaborators. The aim? To equip Art with Heart with a set of tools that would help them to continue doing amazing work for years to come.

We worked closely with the Art with Heart team to create a brief that helped the website to suit their needs. This involved creating the initial site map and wireframes, as well as developing a modular approach towards the creation of the website to ensure it could be as robust as possible while remaining in budget. The most unique feature of the Art with Heart website is their impressive portfolio - where every single project can be customised to showcase it in the best way possible. Working closely with designer Studio Baba and developer Daryl Brunsden, we then oversaw the design and build of the website - writing copy in keeping with an evolved tone of voice and populating each page to ensure it showcased Art with Heart’s work effectively.

The result is a website that offers flexibility for Art with Heart, easy for them to build on in the future - while offering a distinct and dynamic user experience that fully represents the Art with Heart brand. To ensure the launch of the evolved brand was able to resonate with audiences, we also wrote a script and managed the creation of an animation - giving anyone who watches a taster of the fantastic work Art with Heart achieves. Finally, we worked on the monthly social media for Art with Heart, giving the brand an opportunity to really shine and build audiences in Greater Manchester.

We’ve worked with Art with Heart over the last three years For every project Art with Heart delivers, I’ve helped to create marketing strategies to ensure their work packs a punch. From theatre productions and podcasts to workshops - and even an exhibition showcased throughout Manchester - every piece of work Art with Heart produces offers an incredible opportunity to engage with the arts, and it’s a pleasure to create content that ensures it resonates with as many people as possible.

Creating effective marketing materials is always important, but when Art with Heart took much of their work online over the pandemic, their marketing and communications became even more vital for building and maintaining audience. We worked with Art with Heart and designer Studio Baba on several projects over the last three years.

Strategies and campaigns that pack a punch.

Box Tickers - a podcast scrutinising the 2010 Equalities Act

For Box Tickers, the aim was to create a project brand that was reminiscent of protest culture, clearly communicating artist opinions, pointing listeners to relevant additional content and promoting the podcast. We created the initial brief for the project, alongside a social media strategy. Working with designer Studio Baba, who created the perfect visuals for the project, we managed the project’s social media to launch and promote the podcast throughout 2020.

Dial was focused on creative communication and we created the initial project brief, social media strategy and then ran social media management throughout the project. As the project took place over the phone between an artist and an elder - the output for the general public was minimal. Wanting to ensure we were able to connect with wider audiences, the social strategy included weekly round ups of the phone calls, facts about communication and fun snippets we recieved from the elders. Designer Studio Baba translated the brief to create a visual style that was fun and engaging.

Dial - pairing artists with elders to encourage creative conversation.

Old Stock New Stock - creative portraits taken and displayed through the region.

Old Stock New Stock was a project that Art with Heart ran for the first time in 2019, taking creative portraits of elders and touring them around Greater Manchester in a roving caravan. In 2021, within another lockdown, the challenge for this project was showcasing new participant portraits on Art with Heart’s website and social media as well as in real life to ensure they could reach audiences in the same way. Working with Studio Baba, we created a project style that was bold and impactful - the opposite of what people usually associate with elders. We then built a digital strategy, ensuring the the website and social media presentation of the portraits included behind the scenes spotlights, participant showcases, creative contributions from our elders - and allowed audiences the opportunity to completely immerse themselves in the exhibition digitally.

Stan is a wonderful play showing the power of communication - and with the challenge of touring children’s theatre following another Covid lockdown and waining theatre numbers - it was important to ensure the marketing for this show was just right. We worked with Studio Baba to create a playful visual style for Stan that adhered to the Art with Heart brand while making a whole lot of fun about dinosaurs. Following this, I created a social media strategy to promote the play, educate audiences about the key themes and engage audiences through behind the scenes content. A partnership with Manchester Museum also lead to the development of a line of Stan merchandise: t-shirts, notebooks, pencils and colouring books that hit every price point for people attending the show and also showed-off Stan the dinosaur ready for the museum’s 2023 reopening. I managed the merchandise from concept through to production, working with designer Studio Baba and Greater Manchester printers and suppliers to create fun merch that flew off the shelves.

Stan - a play about communication, parental separation and dinosaurs.

Small Voices - a special episode of Box Tickers created with year 6 students.

Small Voices is an especially edition of Box Tickers, created with year 6 students in Greater Manchester. Art with Heart ran equalities workshops with three schools who were then paired up with a poet and facilitator and given the opportunity to raise their voices about issues that are prominent for young people in the world today. From climate to cost of living crisis - the year 6 students had a lot to say and the primary objective of the project was to ensure that as many people as possible heard them. We developed the initial brief and marketing strategy for this project, which was then made into an impactful visual style by Studio Baba. Marketing included quotes from the young people, educational facts about the issues young people face in the UK today - and the management of an outdoor campaign that took quotes from the young people’s poems and showcased them across digital billboards in Greater Manchester.